Nowadays there are many known heating devices for the ironing top of an ironing board.
Heating the ironing top rapidly evaporates the humidity that may penetrate the garment being ironed which is sometimes struck by a jet of steam or lightly sprayed with water by other means external to the iron, such as a spray bottle, an asperser, or other similar means.
Indeed, the steam, if emitted in excessive quantities, or if sprayed on a part of a garment being ironed that is far from the heat of the iron, cools and dampens or wets the garment being ironed in a way that is entirely undesired.
The systems for heating an ironing top are often of the electric type, and sometimes of the fluid type.
The known systems have the common characteristic of being integrated within the structure of the ironing top, or stably fixed to the top or bottom thereof.
The known systems, although effective, make the ironing board, meaning the object in its entirety comprising ironing top and a supporting frame which can generally be folded flat for minimal encumbrance, very heavy and inconvenient to transport.
Moreover, producing such an ironing board with the ironing top heating system integrated is much more complex and and expensive than making a normal ironing board.
Another drawback of the known heating devices is constituted by the fact that the heating layer is generally under the ironing top, i.e. under the plate-like element that forms the rigid support surface against which the iron is pressed to perform the ironing.
In this way the heating layer is actually located relatively far from the garment being ironed, and its efficiency is reduced by the interposition of layers with low thermal conductivity between the heating layer and the garment being ironed.
A further drawback of the known heating devices for an ironing top is constituted by the fact that if, as is generally the case, the ironing top is constituted by a plate-like element made of metal, and its supporting structure is also made of metal, then the ironing top itself and the parts of the frame that support it produce a thermal inertia that retains and diffuses the heat emitted by the heating means, thus wastefully dispersing it and also heating parts of the ironing board which may remain hot for a long time, making the manageability of the ironing board by a user problematic into the bargain.